Last Updated on 12 May 2025 at 14:14

99% of the Swiss economy is made up of small businesses (source: Swiss Confederation). According to the same source, SMEs are those with fewer than 250 employees. Companies with less than 10 employees represent about 90% of all Swiss companies.

In today’s world, these companies are very fragile and have no way of protecting their digital assets and content.

In a majority of cases, this digital content constitutes a competitive advantage that contributes to the establishment of a corporate or personal brand. Especially since Google – which now accounts for over 90% of global searches – has stated on its blog, which is widely followed by SEO professionals, that “quality content is favoured in search results“.

Content thieves know that small organisations do not have the defensive power, know-how or active knowledge of their rights as authors, let alone the processes of a large multinational.

However, in proportion to its turnover a small company has to invest much more in the creation of its own digital content. In this case, the theft of its content is a direct attack on the very existence of the victim company.

Content protection is a process

This article will focus on defending intangible products: digital content, whether in the form of text, blog posts or custom visuals. It will share some practices to act quickly and protect your work — a sort of best practice on what to do against content thieves.

The key question is not “if content will be stolen“ but rather “what to do to monitor and protect your rights when content is stolen“. Indeed, quality content will be stolen sooner or later, and not just once, by one person. A“case by case” interaction will not be effective in the long run.

That’s why seeing this as a process will help you

Digital content that is most often stolen

Today, everything is stolen. It is, above all, quality and original creations that are a privileged target. Besides the counterfeiting of physical products, this theft covers absolutely everything:

Why does everything get stolen?

Theft does not happen primarily because it is easy to do (although that is a factor) but because creativity, innovation and intellect are rare commodities. And since everything that is scarce is valuable…

Digital content

A little background

The basis of the Internet, in a form very similar to what exists today, was conceived in the academic world, specifically at CERN (Geneva). It was Timothy John Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau who set up the basis of the web (the World Wide Web) and navigation by hypertext links. Exchanges were not very secure, as the main purpose was to share. Indeed, the academic world is, by definition, a place for sharing ideas and knowledge. Trust and respect are required.

thirty years later, with the help of technological developments, we find ourselves in a world where it is possible to carry out a multitude of actions such as financial transactions, shopping, entertainment, communication and information. All with a few clicks on the Internet.

This development has led to a diversification of possibilities linked to sharing (videos are an example)… and even to the appearance of professions and notions that did not exist before. For example, the job of writer/content creator did not exist. The notion of“personal brand” was not as widespread as it is today.

Nowadays, there is a lot of creation.

You will find billions of new web pages, articles, documents, images, videos, music, computer software code, physical products, and the list goes on. As of May 2019, the world had no less than 3 billion Google searches per day (that’s about 75,000 searches per second) and almost 3 million blog posts being written per day.

The creation and use of content has become exponential, as you can see in real-time on the website https://www.internetlivestats.com/

It’s a small world, and today, it’s even smaller

As a content creator, you will not be the first or the last person or company whose digital content is being copied. Over the years, there is a kind of indifference that developed in the face of the overwhelming amount of illegal appropriation of content. This is not a blasé attitude, nor is it complacency, but simply an observation.

Indeed, content creation requires more time and resources than an entire army of copy-robbers eagerly awaiting any new publication. The average time for content creators is 4 days, while the average time for thieves is 10 minutes.

In practice, creators can no longer keep up with “high demand”.

The creation of original content, however,

Content, the focal point of one’s brand

Nowadays, content creation is closely linked to the creation of

Copying the best form of flattery, really?

To paraphrase Charles Caleb Colton, whose words have become famous: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” We can ask ourselves whether copying is a form of flattery or whether it serves the dishonest interests of a group of people or an individual.

Why not tell it like it is?

A theft is a theft and not a“flattery” that makes the original creator lose income. It is possible to do business ethically; this aspect does not prevent the success of a business. In fact, the“ethical” aspect has become an important element in the choice of a service or product provider.

The explanations received following content thefts always say the same thing, with a few variations. Here is a small selection to amuse us with the absurdity. Note that these are real answers.

The risks with content thieves

Google penalises identical content that appears on several websites under different author and publisher names from the initial source. The issue of duplicate content has been much talked about, and any professional should beware of such tactics.

In this case, there is a dilution of quality among the other 200 criteria Google uses to evaluate the content offered by a website. The other problems with content thieves is that:

Sharing the same content with author’s permission

Be aware that there are technical ways to properly republish the same content on other websites. Healthy, reciprocal, and informed sharing can be done using these steps:

1. adding the “canonical” link (=original link) to be inserted in the code of the additional web page.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://site.original" />

2. request an author account to publish; this will allow your name to be automatically added to the meta data of the web page.

<meta name="author" content="Votre Nom">

These 2 technical indications in the meta data of the web page communicate to search engines where the original content is located and who the author is.

Thus, following a search, it is the original link that will be presented.

The advantage of this method is that it is possible to present the same content on other websites, and without incurring the penalty of duplicate content, because the source of the canonical link always points to the first place of publication. By doing this with the active use of a canonical link, there will be no dilution of traffic, but a gain of traffic and visibility.

Tools like Yoast SEO or other WordPress add-ons allow the addition of the canonical link and the author’s name (only one per page). It’s simple and elegant, not to mention a win-win situation.

When and why should you act in case of theft?

From the moment you discover the thief of your content. In my experience, stolen content appears after a period of 54 to 252 days, and in the case of a well-optimised thieving site, even faster.

Monitoring and defending one’s intellectual property rights is indeed a task to be planned for in the context of one’s marketing and branding activities. Depending on the size of your digital assets and content, you can spend a few hours or even a few weeks per quarter on this.

All it takes is a few

What to do when your content has been used without permission?

Once the thief is discovered, don’t delay in reacting.

The moment your content ends up on several websites without your authorisation but under different names, this penalises the original website on which you published. In addition, it creates a dilution of your traffic and a decrease in the number of your own visitors.

It is also true that search engine algorithms, especially Google, are able to identify the first place of publication and the author, but this is not always the case when the author’s name is intentionally changed and when it is another website that presents exactly the same thing but without using the “canonical” link in the metadata of the page. If the web page that reproduces your content identically does not have this technical indication, then the content will be considered duplicated.

Unfortunately, content thieves are well aware of the risks involved in the illegality of their actions. They rely on the lack of technical and legal knowledge of their victims, who stop defending themselves because the content creators and authors do not know how to do so.

Where to start to assert your rights?

1. stay calm

Even if you feel like going

Other ways to act

If you have suffered significant losses in traffic and visibility, or if ethics in business is important and you wish to contribute to a cleaner Internet, then you should know that it is possible to take action to end the thief’s “flourishing expertise“. All perfectly legal.

DMCA complaint to Google

Google’s algorithm

Conclusion

When your content is stolen, all is not lost.

Implementing a process, as mentioned above, will help you reduce your investment in time and resources. Despite the initial investment and learning curve, you will win in the long run. For a small business, this investment is well worth it.

Today, there are many technological means and methods to consider an active attitude of protecting your digital assets and copyrights. These assets have a high value since“content has become the king” of any business or personal brand. As proof, here are the thieves using your assets … instead of creating their own content.

Finally, protecting your content is a big deal

Presentation: Digital Content

The following presentation summarises the steps to follow:

1. how to properly republish your content on other websites
2. and how to react if your content is used without permission.

Note: this article first appeared on the blog of LeTemps newspaper, in French language, and under the “Business” section. It has been reproduced here in its entirety.

• Contributeur

Elena Debbaut

Partenaire – Restructuration Opérationnelle

https://elena.debbaut.solutions/

ed@consultingteam.solutions

Elena Debbaut is a strategic execution expert to boards and executive teams. She leads and advises on complex transformations when governance barriers, internal politics, or structural fragmentation prevent organizations from executing critical decisions.

Specialities:

• governance-constrained transformation
• operational restructuring
• strategic recovery & execution